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The Memory of Pablo Escobar

03 Dec 07

The extraordinary story of the richest and most violent gangster in history – from his youth, his bid for political power, his domination of the world’s cocaine trade, his campaign against the Colombian state during which thousands died, his imprisonment in a luxurious private jail, his escape, through to his eventual capture and shooting – is told in hundreds of photographs gathered by photographer James Mollison in Colombia.

Exhaustively researched, this visual biography includes photographs from Escobar family albums, pictures by Escobar’s bodyguards, pictures from police files (both shot by the police and taken in raids on Escobar’s premises), and snapshots by the Federal Drug Administration officer who helped hunt Escobar down.

The book’s illuminating text draws on new interviews with family members, other gangsters, Colombian police and judges and other survivors of Escobar’s killing sprees, supplemented by contemporary photographs by Mollison of Escobar’s fleet of planes, his private zoo, arms caches captured by the police – and even Escobar’s prison jukebox. A compelling picture story and a landmark in visual journalism.

James Mollison was born in Kenya in 1973. He studied Art and Design at Oxford Brookes University and Film and Photography at Newport School of Art and Design. He then moved to Italy to work with Fabrica. His work has been widely published throughout the world including by Colors, the New York Times magazine, the Guardian magazine and Le Monde.

The Memory of Pablo Escobar is the original follow-up to his work on the great apes – widely seen as an exhibition at the Natural History Museum, London, and in the book James and Other Apes (Chris Boot, 2004). Mollison has lived in Venice since 2003.